


in another universe

by forgivenessishardforus



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 03, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:50:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgivenessishardforus/pseuds/forgivenessishardforus
Summary: A collection of my shorter prompt fics, in one place for your reading pleasure.





	1. First Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "How do you feel about a drabble written from the perspective of someone other than Bellamy and Clarke? I always wonder what Murphy or raven or someone would think, especially if bellarke' first kiss was in public--like the hug in 2x05. I've never read one from anyone's perspective than theirs :)))) "

“Bellamy,” Raven says exasperatedly, “will you calm down? I’m sure she’s fine.”

Abruptly stopping in his pacing, Bellamy spins on his heel to glare at her. “Calm down,” he says flatly. “Raven, it’s been _three days_ since we last heard from her. Don’t tell me you aren’t worried.”

“I’m not,” she says. When Bellamy only rolls his eyes, she continues, “It’s _Clarke._ Girl survived alone in the woods for three months during the winter. She can take care of herself. I’m sure the batteries in the radio died or something.”

“You said those batteries would last for years.”

“Something else, then. What I’m trying to say is there are a number of reasons she might not have called, and none of them involve her dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Bellamy has nothing to say to that, except to resume his pacing. She sighs.

“Can you please stop that? It’s making me dizzy. Just go—go make yourself useful somewhere else or something?”

“There’s nothing else to be done,” he grumbles. “I took care of all that this morning. There’s _literally_ nothing better for me to be doing.”

She sighs again, pointedly. “Then maybe take your pacing somewhere else,” she suggests. “I’m trying to work here.”

He opens his mouth to retort, but before he can get any words out the radio at his hip crackles.

“Movement in the south woods,” Miller’s voice reports.

Lightning-fast, Bellamy unclips the radio and holds it to his mouth. “Friend or enemy?”

“Friend, I think,” Miller replies. “It looks like Clarke.”

The last word is hardly out of his mouth before Bellamy’s taken off, the door to the engineering bay clanging shut behind him.

“Hey, you could at least wait up,” Raven mutters, far too late for him to hear her. There’s a fond smile on her face as she hops off the table and hobbles after him.

By the time she steps onto the sunlit lawn of Arkadia, Bellamy is already near the gates, moving at a pace that’s closer to a run than a walk. Cursing her leg, she struggles to catch up.

She’s still some distance away when the gates open and Clarke comes barrelling through, a five-foot-five dynamo with hair flashing golden in the sun. She launches herself at Bellamy and he’s ready for her, catching her sturdily about the waist. Raven thinks she can hear their relieved laughter as Clarke buries her face in Bellamy’s shoulder.

It doesn’t surprise her—maybe it should; it certainly surprises Bellamy—when Clarke lifts her face from his neck to plant her lips firmly on his. For a second Bellamy seems too shocked to appropriately respond before one hand goes up hesitantly to cup Clarke’s face.

A smile spreads over her face, quickly widening into a grin. She had been privately wondering for months now when or if the two of them would figure it out. Making a mental note to tell Jasper and Monty of the development, she picks up her pace.

They’re still completely absorbed in each other when she finally reaches them. It occurs to leave them be, but then—she had been waiting for this almost as long as they had.

“ _Finally_ ,” she says loudly. “It’s about damn time.”


	2. Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The memory of the night before engulfs him, warms his blood to boiling and fills his chest with a happiness too big to be contained by his ribcage, as bright and brilliant and explosive as the birth of a star. Sometimes he feels as though he’d been waiting years for her, waiting his whole life for her to fill the cracks inside of him with her light, and after last night he can say with confidence that every moment of waiting had been worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Could you write a drabble about the morning after Clarke and Bell finally have sex??"

He wakes up first. His room is windowless, devoid of light except for the small strip that seeps in from the hallway through the crack at the bottom of the door; he has no way of knowing what time it is, but something tells him it’s still the quiet hours before dawn.

Clarke’s head is on his chest, hair fanned out over his shoulder, her soft breaths warm and ticklish on his skin. One of her legs is thrown over his own, a comforting weight, and her hand rests curled just above his heartbeat. She had fallen asleep listening to it, after.

After.

The memory of the night before engulfs him, warms his blood to boiling and fills his chest with a happiness too big to be contained by his ribcage, as bright and brilliant and explosive as the birth of a star. Sometimes he feels as though he’d been waiting years for her, waiting his whole life for her to fill the cracks inside of him with her light, and after last night he can say with confidence that every moment of waiting had been worth it.

She was worth every second.

Tenderly, he brushes his fingers through her hair, soft now that she’s able to bathe regularly, shorter than he had ever seen it. It’s tangled in places and he works his way through them methodically, tugging as gently as he can.

Clarke stirs, twists her head to look at him. “Hey,” she murmurs, voice hoarse with sleep.

God, he loves the sound of her voice in the morning.

“Hi,” he whispers.

She wriggles up the bed so her face is on a level with his, and he turns his head so that his lips can meet hers. The kiss is unhurried, slow as the passage of stars across the sky, the warmth of her lips sending tingles down his spine. She sighs into his mouth before pulling away.

“I still love you,” she says sleepily, and there’s that sun, exploding in his chest again. The words had caught him off guard in their simplicity, the first time she’d said them, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the shock of hearing it coming from her mouth, directed at him.

“I still love you, too,” he replies, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

She curls up against his side and he wraps his arms around her, holding her close. Her hair tickles his chin and he brushes his lips against the top of her head.

When the sun rises, they’ll have work to do. Another day of planning and packing and mapping, fighting for their lives and thinking no further ahead than the next step on the rocky path to uncertain survival. But here, in the dying hours of the night, he can hold her and pretend for a little while longer that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.


	3. One Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Living on Luna’s rig suits Bellamy. His dark hair is constantly wind-ruffled, messy curls, his freckles dark against skin that’s made even more golden by the sun. He smiles more, too, lips curving and eyes crinkling in a way she’d almost forgotten. The hollowness in his eyes is still there but it’s…filled in, somewhat, so that she no longer feels like she’s falling into the darkness within him whenever their gazes meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I have a prompt that maybe it's not typical. Do you know when you see a handsome guy who is playing with children and your ovaries explode? Well, now extrapolate this to Bellarke hahaha"

Living on Luna’s rig suits Bellamy. His dark hair is constantly wind-ruffled, messy curls, his freckles dark against skin that’s made even more golden by the sun. He smiles more, too, lips curving and eyes crinkling in a way she’d almost forgotten. The hollowness in his eyes is still there but it’s…filled in, somewhat, so that she no longer feels like she’s falling into the darkness within him whenever their gazes meet.

At the moment, he’s sitting cross-legged on the deck surrounded by a crowd of children, showing them with hands that are not as rough as they used to be how to mend the tears in fishing nets. Using his hands to fix instead of break.

She understands the feeling. More and more, she has been spending time with her mother in the room that had been made into an infirmary, wrapping bandages and stitching cuts, using her own hands to heal instead of harm. The healing touch had come back slowly, a distant memory she had almost forgotten, but she finds calmness in making people better. Peace.

From a short distance away, she listens to the low rumble of Bellamy’s voice and the corresponding, carefree laughter of the children. These children have never known anything outside the peaceful solitude of Luna’s rig. A small part of her is jealous, but for the most part she’s glad that generations to follow will only know the same.

Bellamy is telling them a tale of Poseidon, God of the Sea, as he works. “He was also known as god of storms,” Bellamy is saying, “tamer of horses and causer of earthquakes—”

“Earthquakes?” a small boy pipes up, sounding worried.

Laughing, Bellamy ruffles the kid’s hair and her stomach performs a funny little flip. “We don’t have to worry about that,” he says. “The sea is Poseidon’s domain. He gives protection to those who live here.”

Sensing her gaze, he looks over his shoulder at her and smiles. There’s true happiness in his face, a lightness inside him that shines out through his eyes. Her stomach flips again, and she returns his smile, a little shakily.

Lit up by the sun, hands holding needle and thread, surrounded by children and sharing stories from an ancient past—this is where Bellamy is meant to be.

Maybe it’s where _they’re_ meant to be. Is it too early yet to begin thinking of the future? Because there’s a sudden image of a dark-haired, freckled, blue-eyed little boy running across her vision, real enough to make her ache for something she didn’t know she wanted until now.

A future, a future with him, with their children who will be raised in a world that carries the scars of the battles they’ll never have to fight. Proof that if you persevere in hope, the light at the end of the tunnel will eventually come.

She walks over to him, sits at his side. Smiling at her, he puts down the thread and the half-mended net so that he can take her hand.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hey,” she replies. Happiness, warm and real and true, fills her up to bursting and she squeezes his hand. “Have you told them yet the story of how Poseidon battled with Athena for possession of a city?”

His grin widens. “Not yet.” Turning his attention back to the children, he says, “Athena and Poseidon both agreed to give the people of the city a gift…”


	4. Looking Forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For some time, they stand outside the walls of their old home, silently staring at the eighteen mounds of dirt. They aren’t alone; a number of the other kids drop by to say their last goodbyes to an old friend, but they stay there the longest, long after everyone else has moved on.
> 
> “It’s not your fault, you know,” Clarke says quietly when they’re alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "what about a Bellarke romantic encounter in the dropship, they have a moment forgetting the end of the world and away from everything for a moment."

It had been Monty’s idea, to return to their old home one last time before leaving forever. So, two days before they’re set to depart from Arkadia towards the north, a group of them—all of the original hundred that are left, even Murphy—make the six hour trek back to the dropship.

He can’t help but count them, as they walk out the gate in small groups or pairs. Thirty-six, not counting Emori, who walks with Murphy; Bryan, who walks with Miller; Raven or himself. Thirty-eight, including Octavia who still hadn’t come home and Clarke, who’s come to a stop beside him.

(It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that Clarke was one of the hundred, not separate in the way that he was; for so long now it had been the two of them, together, taking care of everyone else.)

“Walk together?” she asks, and without replying he falls into step beside her.

The dropship is a burned out wreck in the middle of a virulently green field, a haunted ruin from a previous life. While most of the kids head to the wreckage, to the remainder of their cookfire or the place where their tents had been, he heads unerringly to the graveyard; Clarke follows him unquestioningly.

For some time, they stand outside the walls of their old home, silently staring at the eighteen mounds of dirt. They aren’t alone; a number of the other kids drop by to say their last goodbyes to an old friend, but they stay there the longest, long after everyone else has moved on.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” Clarke says quietly when they’re alone. She always seems to know what he’s thinking.

“I could have saved some of them.” Atom, who he had left out alone in the fog; Charlotte, who he had let throw herself off of a cliff; Roma and Mbege, who had died following him; Dax, who he had killed himself.

Finn, who he had given a gun despite knowing better; Fox, who he had tried and failed to keep safe; Monroe, who had trusted him to choose the right side. Tears sting at his eyes.

“Hey. Hey, look at me.” Clarke slips her hand into his and tugs insistently, until he reluctantly meets her gaze. “We’ve both made bad decisions, Bellamy, we both have reason to hate ourselves. We both carry the weight of far more deaths than any one person should. But here? We did good here. We did the best we could.”

“Sixty-two of them are dead,” he says hoarsely. “We could have done better.”

“We did the best we could,” Clarke repeats firmly. “I tell myself that every day. Learn to believe it, or it will haunt you forever. And I think we deserve better than that by now.”

His answer is in his eyes, in the tear that slowly trickles down his cheek; with a soft, sad, “ _Oh,_ ” Clarke releases his hand and throws her arms around his neck, holding him to her as tightly as she can, enfolding his broken pieces in her warmth.

It helps, as holding Clarke always does; he embraces her as tightly as he can, buries his nose in her familiar smell, and breathes deep.

It reminds him: for all that he’s lost, she is still here. They are still together. They are not without hope.

He lets her go first, when the tightness in his chest has eased up a little. She untangles her arms from around him, slides her hand back down to grasp his.

“We’ve spent enough time mourning the dead,” she says, pulling him away from the graves. “Let’s go spend some time with the living.”

He follows, because he’d follow her anywhere, and because her meaning is clear: there are still those who can be saved.

He doesn’t look back.


	5. Search Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Bellamy,” Clarke says, “maybe we should go back.” Her voice is quiet, barely audible over the crackling of the flames. She looks at him as she says it, her blue eyes apprehensive as she states a truth he doesn’t want to hear. 
> 
> His answer is just as quiet, but steady, certain. “I can’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Bellamy and Clarke are out searching for Octavia and have to set up camp for the night. they end up sitting by the fire, talking about their worries for the night, and fall asleep next to each other"

“Bellamy,” Clarke says, “maybe we should go back.” Her voice is quiet, barely audible over the crackling of the flames. She looks at him as she says it, her blue eyes apprehensive as she states a truth he doesn’t want to hear.

His answer is just as quiet, but steady, certain. “I can’t.”

In his head, he _knows_ that there are bigger things to worry about right now than the whereabouts of his sister. He knows that in order to be the leader his people need, he should let Octavia go. He knows that Octavia has cut herself away from him and he should probably let her, probably shouldn’t chase after her to heal something that had proven to be irreparably broken.

But his heart—his heart tells him there’s no point in him surviving, if he fails at saving his sister. His heart finds it impossible to focus on the problems facing all of humanity when his sister is somewhere out there, possibly alone, oblivious to the coming doom.

Clarke heaves a barely-there sigh, one that tells him his answer was expected. “What if we don’t find her?” she asks.

“We will.” _We have to_.

“We might not.” Chewing on her lower lip, Clarke places her hand on his shoulder, and he braces himself for what is inevitably to come. “Bellamy, I know how much you love your sister—but if she doesn’t want to come home, that’s her choice. We can’t continue to put her wellbeing over that of the others.”

“You can go back, if you want. But I can’t—I can’t just leave her.”

“Like she left you?” For all that they’re said in an apologetic tone, the words hurt, and he flinches. “Octavia will return when she’s ready, and maybe nothing you do before then will convince her. Personally, I don’t know if she’s worth the effort.”

Clarke still hadn’t forgiven Octavia for what she’d said to him, for what she’d done to him. For that matter, neither had he. But—she was his sister. He had to take care of her.

Pulling her pack towards her, Clarke begins laying out her bedroll. “And for the record,” she says while her face is turned away from him, “I’m not going anywhere.”

The words send a warmth through him hotter than the flames that lick at the air. Without responding, he lays out his own bedroll next to hers. He doesn’t find the words to respond until after she’s fallen asleep, her curled leg brushing his hip and her breath warm on his neck.

“I’m glad,” he whispers, quiet enough that the words are mere shapes without sound. “Because I can’t lose you, either.”


	6. Piano

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the deepest, darkest hours of the night he plays the story of himself, note by painstaking note. There’s a calmness, he finds, in the hunt for the perfect sound, running his fingers over bone white and burnt black keys, their music echoing off the walls of the engineering bay. No room for outside thought, when he’s seated at the piano. No room for nightmares, for grief and anger and loss. Only calm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Bellamy learns to play piano because it calms him and he's actually really good at it"

He watches from a distance as they unload the piano from the back of the rover and carry it over to a spot in the corner of the engineering bay. It comes with the memory of a body, blistered and burned, slumped over it and shuddering, he turns away.

(It’s easy for them to pillage the mountain, he thinks, when they’re not the ones who killed it.)

But the image of the piano is stuck to the back of his eyelids, an uneasy restlessness in the tips of his fingers. And when he’s yet again unable to sleep that night, he finds himself making his way to the engineering bay, sitting down on the padded bench, his fingers hovering uncertainly over the ancient keys.

He presses down, and the clamour of the chords fills the room, fills a place within himself for all their discordance. He repeats the action, with one finger and then three and then all ten, marvelling at the different sounds that result, the different emotions they recall.

He doesn’t know the names of the notes, so he calls them by how they feel:

This one, sharp and metallic, is the echo of a gunshot off the walls of the Ark, a bullet embedded in the chancellor’s stomach, a bloom of crimson, shockingly bright among the shades of grey;

This one, deep and melancholy, is the hiss of airlock doors as they slide open and his mother is sucked out into the vacuum of space, a wordless cry on her lips, the twist of a knife in his stomach;

This one, vibrant and clear, is Octavia’s triumphant shout upon stepping onto Earth’s earth, dirt sinking beneath the presence of her boots, the first touch of the sun on his light-starved skin;

This one, soft and hopeful, is the dance of firelight across the bruised and bloody and sleeping features of the girl he’d come to trust, the girl who’d made herself a home in the most secret part of himself;

And this one, hollow and reverberating, is her last words before she left, the memory of her lips still warm on his cheek, the haunted shadow in her blue eyes, the sting of tears in his.

In the deepest, darkest hours of the night he plays the story of himself, note by painstaking note. There’s a calmness, he finds, in the hunt for the perfect sound, running his fingers over bone white and burnt black keys, their music echoing off the walls of the engineering bay. No room for outside thought, when he’s seated at the piano. No room for nightmares, for grief and anger and loss. Only calm.

He plays until his fingers ache, and even then there’s a sweetness in the pain; pain that comes from accomplishing something, from creating something beautiful. He plays to remember: the lighthearted chime of laughter, the warmth of moonshine in his stomach, the smell of meat roasting over the fire.

He plays to forget.

And, slowly, it gets easier. He can walk around camp without seeing her ghost in all the shadows. He can see the faces of his friends without also seeing the faces of those he couldn’t save. He remembers how to smile, how to laugh. How to breathe. He wakes up in the mornings feeling sleep deprived but alive.

The piano is his secret. Even when he meets Gina, who is too light, it seems, to have survived the Earth, he continues to play, leaving her tangled asleep in his blankets some nights while he leaves to fill the yearning within himself. She looks at him in the morning like she knows but she never asks, and he never offers an explanation.

(Gina, too, becomes a song beneath his fingers, a progression of light rapid notes that float like bubbles on the air.)

When she dies (too light after all, he thinks darkly, to survive on the Earth) the music leaves him, fingers hovering over the keyboard without playing a single note. He loses part of himself in the weeks that follow, feels it drain out of him through invisible puncture wounds in his skin. There isn’t a sound in the world, anyway, capable of encompassing this new horror he’s committed, the feeling of jaws around his heart and slime in his stomach.

(If it has a sound, it’s the sound of silence: silence of the grave, silence of deep and empty space.)

The piano is still there when they return to Arkadia, one problem solved while another yet looms, the part of him that had just begun to heal fracturing again beneath the weight that was the loss of his sister. He takes himself to bed early after a subdued celebration, but sleep eludes him; so in the middle hours of the night he finds himself once again alone in the engineering bay, fingers floating over the piano’s keys.

His joints creak their way through the first few notes, rusty and disused, until the sweet sounds sing themselves along his veins. He loses himself in the music—a song for his sister; loud and abrasive, then soft and gentle, as full of contradictions as she is—and doesn’t notice Clarke has entered the room until she sits down beside him.

He stops abruptly, and she says, “No, please don’t. I didn’t know you could play—it’s beautiful.”

He stays silent, still, because there’s something strange in the way she makes him feel: like she’s filling a space beside him that he hadn’t known was empty. Like he’s not quite ready to carve a space out for her in his heart, but she’s made herself a home there anyway, effortlessly.

“Play for me?” she asks beseechingly, voice haunted and hopeful.

Like in these dark and empty hours of the night, they are the only two souls alive; and with all the vastness and time in the world to go, still they had ended up occupying the same space together. The way they always had. The way they always would.

So he does.


	7. Swing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows what he’s thinking: of the blood that stains his hands from a decision made in haste, of the weight of a man’s body, shrouded in white cloth, heavy in his arms, of the lifeless look in his sister’s blue eyes that last time he’d seen her, two long months ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "the delinquents play baseball"

Swing, and a miss.

Swing, and a miss.

Swing, and a miss.

“That’s three, Clarke!” Jasper yells from the pitcher’s mound—a flat rock they’d placed in the middle of the clearing. “You’re out!” He’s grinning from ear to ear, the happiest she can remember seeing him since—

Well, since Mount Weather.

With a huff, she passes the bat—a stout tree branch that had been stripped of twigs—to Murphy, who swaggers up to home plate, and collapses next to Bellamy on the sidelines.

“It’s been a century since anyone’s played this game for real,” she complains. “I don’t see why we have to play by the rules.”

Bellamy chuckles and bumps his arm lightly into hers. “Even if you had ten chances,” he teases, “we both know you’d still strike out.”

She glares at him, an angry retort on the tip of her tongue, and then sighs. “I am pretty terrible, aren’t I?”

“You can’t expect to be good at everything.”

“But _you_ can,” she points out. Bellamy smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and immediately she regrets saying anything.

“I’m not good at everything,” he says quietly. “Not by a long shot.”

She knows what he’s thinking: of the blood that stains his hands from a decision made in haste, of the weight of a man’s body, shrouded in white cloth, heavy in his arms, of the lifeless look in his sister’s blue eyes that last time he’d seen her, two long months ago.

There were still moments like this, for both of them, for _all_ of them: moments when sunshine and laughter and genuine _happiness_ can become shadowed over by the guilt and grief and pain that resides within them.

She places her hand over his, a gesture of comfort. “But you _are_ good at baseball,” she says. “Better than the rest of us, which doesn’t make sense since none of us have actually played before—”

“I’m naturally gifted,” he says with a smirk, one that’s almost real.

“Could you teach me?” she asks. “How to play, I mean.”

The look he gives her is wide-eyed, a little confused, and a flush crawls up her neck. Things between her and Bellamy had been good—better than good—since ALIE had been defeated, but there were still questions that hovered between them, questions that she didn’t want to answer because the answers threatened to shake her whole world.

Saving the world from a second apocalypse was a problem she didn’t mind facing. Thinking about her feelings for Bellamy was something else altogether.

So she says, teasingly, “I won’t ask you again, Blake. This is the one and only time I’ll admit you’re better at something than me.”

“Well, in that case…” He grins at her, real, his eyes crinkling around the corners. “I’ll try my best. Some things are unteachable, though.”

The next time it’s her turn to step up to the plate, Bellamy steps up with her. He adjusts her grip on the bat before standing behind her, reaching his arms around her to place his hands over hers. Energy is rushing along her veins, sparks jumping wherever his skin brushes hers. He’s all around her, crowding her senses in a way she can’t possibly ignore.

Taking several deep breaths to calm the racing of her heart, she tells herself—

“Focus, Clarke,” Bellamy murmurs, his voice a deep rumble in her ear, and she almost jumps before realizing that he hasn’t, in fact, read her mind. “Stop thinking about saving the world. Stand straight, with confidence. Treat the bat like it’s an extension of your arm. Focus on nothing but the ball when Jasper throws it.”

He guides her through several practice swings before stepping back, the loss of contact sending a jolt through her.

“That’s not good enough,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound breathless. “Take the first swing with me.”

She can’t see his face, but she just _bets_ he’s raising an eyebrow inquisitively, shaking his head in exasperation, as his arms go back around her.

“We’re ready,” she calls to Jasper, who winds up extravagantly before throwing.

The baseball—which Monty had carved roughly out of wood—hits the bat with a loud _thwack_ and goes soaring off into the trees. Excitement rushes through her, and she jumps up and down.

“I think you’re supposed to run around the bases now,” Bellamy says, his arms still loosely around her.

She turns to look at him, adrenaline pulling her cheeks into a large grin. “We both know that was a home run,” she tells him.

He smiles down at her, and her breath catches in her throat. Messy curls fall over his forehead and sunlight glints in his eyes, turning them to liquid. She thinks about kissing him.

She doesn’t.

But for the first time she thinks that maybe, someday soon, she will.


	8. Change of Clothes (Change of Heart)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He hadn’t realized how much he associated Clarke with her clothes until she appeared in the woods like a goddamn magic trick, wearing the long black coat with studded shoulder pads of a grounder and looking like a stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "There're many fics talking about Clarke's hair and how she could get a new hairstyle. I want one about a change of costume. Imagine Bellamy's face!"
> 
> Or: the one where my meta bleeds over into my storytelling.

He hadn’t realized how much he associated Clarke with her clothes until she appeared in the woods like a goddamn magic trick, wearing the long black coat with studded shoulder pads of a grounder and looking like a stranger.

She sounded almost like Clarke when she talked. She popped Raven’s dislocated shoulder back in and looked over his injury with Clarke’s methodical hands. Her ideas held the weight of Clarke’s sure command.

But she wasn’t Clarke.

It didn’t help that he was still angry at her for leaving—and her new wardrobe served only to remind him of the choice she had made, how she had stood at the side of those who had betrayed them instead of returning to where she belonged. But he had never felt more out of place at her side than he did then, him in the Ark-issued brown shirt he’d been wearing for weeks, and her dressed in tight leather that made her appear ready for war.

And then after everything—after “We need each other” and “Together” and “I trust you”—he came to realize that the Clarke he had known was still there under the clothes like armour, that their partnership was unbreakable and not unfixable, that he still needed her and couldn’t—wouldn’t—let her go. Her clothes didn’t matter, not when her life was in danger. Not when her hand was so warm and small in his. Not when she stood next to him at the end of it all and said _the world is not yet saved_.

So his reaction surprises him when, upon returning to Arkadia, Clarke disappears to find a shower and re-emerges with wet blonde hair that is still tangled but clean, wearing the ragged jacket and shirt that she had left behind four months ago now.

He stares, heart thundering in his ears, mouth open wordlessly.

“What?” Clarke asks, shifting under his gaze.

He wants to say, _You’re back_ , but that would sound ridiculous; she had been back for a week already.

She seems to recognize the source of his disconcertion, because she looks down at her clothes. “I didn’t feel like myself in the old ones,” she confesses. “Which was what I wanted, for a while. But now…”

Suddenly he understands, because he had done the same thing in putting on the guard’s jacket: used it as a shield between himself and the responsibilities he no longer wanted to face, the decisions he didn’t want to have to make.

“But now you’re ready to come home?” he asks. In a way, she already has come home—they’re standing in the corridors of the Ark, the voices of those who have returned from Polis echoing faintly off the walls—but she knows what he means. The question is soft, a little bit hopeful, and she smiles.

“Yes,” she says. “Honestly, I wish I never left.”


	9. Wounded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows she must look a wreck: blood, hot and wet, is pulsing down her back and side; her face and front is covered in mud and pine needles, and her hair is a snarled mess from her tussle in the dirt. Giving him a weak smile, she says, “I wasn’t fast enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Clarke has a wound on her back and Bellamy is the only one who is with her and can take a look."

“Jesus Christ, Clarke, what happened?” The harshness of his tone is belied by the concern in his eyes, and he’s darted across the clearing to her side before the last word has left his mouth.

She knows she must look a wreck: blood, hot and wet, is pulsing down her back and side; her face and front is covered in mud and pine needles, and her hair is a snarled mess from her tussle in the dirt. Giving him a weak smile, she says, “I wasn’t fast enough.”

Bellamy’s hands are fluttering by the four deep gashes on her right shoulder, uncertain in their movements. “You should—ah—”

“Probably take my shirt off,” she finishes for him. “Would you give me a hand?”

“I, uh, didn’t want to ask,” he mutters. His fingers brush against the skin of her hip as he curls them in the hem of her shirt, and hesitantly he begins tugging the fabric up her body.

“Sometime today, Bellamy.” He picks up his pace, a little, although he’s still careful about removing the bits of fabric that have gotten caught in the wound; finally, the wreck of her shirt lands on the ground at her feet.

“There are bandages in my bag,” she says. “In the tent.”

He runs over to the tent and ducks inside, returning seconds later with a roll of bandages in one hand and a water canteen in the other. His eyes stay firmly on the ground as he makes his way back to her, and she fights off a smile.

“Bellamy,” she says softly, just to see his reaction; his eyes dart to hers, down briefly, and then jump away. His cheeks flush red, adorably.

“Tell me what to do,” he says when he’s back at her side, his voice a little rougher than usual.

“Clean it, as best you can. Use…” What exactly he should use escapes her, and next thing she knows Bellamy’s stripped off his own shirt and is dousing it with water.

“At least this way we’ll both be down a set of clothes,” he says. The first touch of the wet cloth on her tender shoulder sends goosebumps prickling over her back and arms, and she swears she can feel the heat radiating off his bare skin, warming hers.

His touch is gentle as he clears dirt and dried blood from the wound, but the pain still makes her flinch. “Sorry,” he says every time she does. “Shit—sorry. I wish your mom was here.”

“You’re doing fine,” she reassures him, a little breathless. “Anything more complicated can wait until we return to Arkadia tomorrow.” When the wound is as clean as he can get it, she give him instructions on wrapping the injury, tight but not too tight; it takes no small effort to keep her voice steady as his calloused hands move over her skin.

His movement stills and she thinks he’s done, but instead his fingers dance over the scar on her other shoulder. “I wasn’t fast enough that time, either,” she whispers in answer to his unspoken question.

“You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days,” he murmurs, brushing her hair away from the nape of her neck. His voice is laced with worry, and she twists to face him.

“Down here, we’re all probably going to get killed one day,” she replies. Their chests are mere inches apart, his closeness dizzying, and she can’t help it: she glances down at his lips.

Bellamy takes a shuddering breath, clears his throat, steps away. Disappointment rushes through her, pricks at her skin.

“No need to speed up the inevitable,” he says gruffly. “You should lie down, you need to rest.”

 _Rest with me_ , she almost says, because the urge to stay near him is suddenly overwhelming; but his eyes won’t meet hers and his hands are shoved deep in his pockets.

“You’re right,” she says instead, and thinks: _Maybe one day._


	10. Next Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Clarke! Clarke!” he yells helplessly; if she’s out there, there’s no chance of her hearing him over the storm. He sticks a hand out from the shelter of the cave into the pouring rain; the thick drops hit his skin with the force of bullets, colder than ice for all that they’re still liquid. 
> 
> She won’t be able to survive out there for long. 
> 
> Goddammit, he would have to go out looking for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt(s): "A kind of day trip where Clarke falls into a river and then they find a refuge/bunker. That means Bellamy will give her his shirt, 2 of my headcanons: Clarke seeing Bellamy shirtless and Clarke wearing Bellamy's shirt" and "Imagine that Clarke wears Bellamy's shirt, just his shirt ;) and Bellamy gets pretty nervous!!"

The storms were getting worse. More frequent, more unpredictable; sometimes it felt to him like the Earth was being held in the fist of an unhappy god, and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

They’re out on a day trip to collect more of that antibacterial seaweed—Ark-made antibiotics had long since run out, especially given the increase in radiation-induced blisters and sores—when this storm rises out of nowhere, a sudden howling wind lashing the trees with such force that their tops bend to almost touch the ground, the clear blue sky suddenly covered in clouds of charcoal grey, temperature dropping at least ten degrees.

“We need to find shelter!” he shouts to Clarke, unnecessarily; she nods, slinging her pack over he shoulder, and gestures for him to lead the way.

They’re closer to the dropship than they are to Arkadia, but even that’s too far for them to make it to in time. Instead, he heads at a run towards the cave he knows isn’t too far away, checking behind him every few seconds to make sure Clarke is keeping up.

The force of the wind fills his ears, blocking out every other sound, even that of his own breathing. It holds a taste of the storm to come, cold enough to raise the hair on his arms, feeling like the scrape of a razor blade across his uncovered skin. They make it to the cave seconds before the sky opens up, rain pouring down with a thunderous roar.

“Not a moment too soon!” he shouts, loud enough to be heard over the storm. Throwing his pack on the ground, he looks around for Clarke, and ice cold panic claws at his lungs.

She isn’t there. The space beside him—where he swore she had been just before beginning his last mad dash to safety—is empty.

He spins back around to face the front of the cave, where rain is coming down in a sheet too thick to see through, a deluge of water as heavy as any waterfall. It crackles across his vision like static, and nowhere in the darkness can he see Clarke’s form.

“Clarke! Clarke!” he yells helplessly; if she’s out there, there’s no chance of her hearing him over the storm. He sticks a hand out from the shelter of the cave into the pouring rain; the thick drops hit his skin with the force of bullets, colder than ice for all that they’re still liquid.

She won’t be able to survive out there for long.

Goddammit, he would have to go out looking for her.

He’s about to sprint into the jaws of the storm when she suddenly appears only a dozen feet away. Her blonde hair is dark and plastered to her skull, her pack raised protectively over her head as she stumbles through the mud towards him.

When she bursts into the cave he puts his arms out to catch her, to steady her, and she leans against his chest gratefully, sucking air into her lungs. Water sluices from her hair and clothes to puddle at her feet and her skin feels frozen beneath his hands, purple bruises already rising on her arms where they had been exposed to the rain. She’s shivering violently, and he leads her towards the back of the cave, helps lower her until she’s sitting on the ground.

“I—slipped,” she gasps out, and he notices that her entire backside is covered with a thick layer of mud. “God—it hurts—and—so cold…” Her teeth are chattering, her lips nearly blue.

“We need to get you out of these clothes,” he says. “Come on…”

She sits placidly while he grips her shirt by the hem and tugs it up her body, lifting her bruised arms so that he can pull it over her head, and that scares him most of all. Clarke wasn’t one to stop fighting, not even for a second.

“Clarke, look at me,” be says desperately. “Clarke, are you okay?”

She blinks up at him. “Cold,” she says, voice faint. “And tired…”

“Don’t close your eyes,” he tells her. “Don’t look away from me. I need you to take your clothes off, and then put this on.” He strips off his own shirt and hands it to her. “Can you do that for me?”

“But now you don’t have a shirt,” she protests, sounding like a child.

“I don’t need one,” he says. “You do. You have hypothermia.” Or she was close to it, at least. How long did it take to get hypothermia? She had been out in the rain for less than thirty seconds. He shudders to think of what would have happened if she hadn’t found the cave, if he had gone out looking for her and been unable to find her.

“Okay,” she says, but doesn’t move, holding the shirt limply in her hands.

“Do you need my help?”

When she nods he kneels behind her to unclip her bra, peeling the dripping fabric away from her skin. He slips the shirt over her head, maneuvers her arms through the sleeves, and then helps her stand so that he can unbutton her pants and roll them down her legs. He pulls them off one foot and then the other, tossing them to the side before lowering Clarke back down to the ground.

“You know,” he says in an attempt at lightheartedness, “when I imagined undressing you, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

“You’ve imagined undressing me?” Clarke asks softly and he blinks, blushes. The words had come without thought and she was so unresponsive that he hadn’t thought she’d be listening.

Instead of answering, he says, “Stay here and stay awake, okay? I’ll see if I can start a fire.”

The remains of a fire are still near the front of the cave from the last time they’d been here (when he’d been chained to the wall, when Octavia had broken open his skin with her fists) but there’s nothing salvageable, only ash and coals. A further search of the cave yields nothing that will burn and with a sigh he returns to Clarke, who’s sitting with her arms wrapped tight around her knees.

“I guess…I’ll just have to warm you up as best I can,” he says uncertainly. “Is that okay?”

She jerks her chin in a way that’s halfway between a nod and a shrug, which he takes as confirmation. He nudges gently at her shoulder until she lies down and then curls himself around her, covering as much of her body as he can. Arm around her waist, leg over her hip. Her wet hair is in his face, smelling of rain, and he tries to ignore it. She’s still shivering, trembling like a leaf in high wind in his arms. He does his best to absorb her shaking, draw the chill out of her body and replace it with his warmth. The soft fabric of his shirt brushes against his bare chest, reminding him that it’s the only thing stopping his skin from touching hers.

He takes one deep, even breath to calm the racing of his heart, and then another.

After a time her trembling lessens, and then stops altogether. Just to be sure, he quietly asks, “Clarke?”

“I’m still here, Bellamy.” Her voice, although soft and weary, sounds much more like her normal self, and tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding loosens.

“Good,” he says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

He listens to her breathing as she falls asleep, one hand on her wrist to feel the reassurance of her pulse. Her heart beats strong and regular beneath his touch, and, assured of her wellbeing, he allows himself to follow her into sleep.

***

When he wake up his arms are empty, and light is streaming in through the mouth of the cave. He sits up, worry jolting through him, to see Clarke sitting in a pool of sunlight, wearing nothing but his shirt and laying her clothes out to dry.

Heart twisting, his breath catches in his throat and for a moment all he can do is stare, because _goddamn is she beautiful._ Her hair hangs in loose tangled waves down her back, glowing with the sun, and her knees are tucked up to her chin, exposing an unfair amount of her pale skin. His shirt hangs loose over her curves, and the sight of it invokes a feeling of possessiveness, one he quickly tries to quash.

But fuck, he wants her to be his. He wants to wake up to the sight of her in his clothes every morning. He wants, he wants, he wants.

When he can breathe again he stands and walks over to sit beside her. “How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Fine,” she says.

“Even those?” He gestures to the dark purple bruises that mark the skin of her arms like gunshot wounds, and she shrugs.

“They’re sore, but there’s not much I can do about it until we get back to Arkadia. I’ll live.” She smiles at him, face soft. “Thanks for keeping me alive last night. You make a good doctor, Bellamy.”

His face warms. “I did what anyone would have,” he mutters.

“Still.” She pokes at her shirt spread out on the ground with a toe, and sighs. “It’ll be a couple of hours before these are dry enough to wear. What do you fancy for breakfast?”

“Well,” he says, pulling his pack towards him and digging around inside, “our options are dried meat or…dried meat. This was only supposed to be a day trip, remember.”

She grimaces, but takes the jerky he hands her and bites into it. “We should have prepared better,” she muses. “Even if it was only supposed to be a day trip. You never know what could happen to us. We should always have spare food, a change of clothes...”

 _But then I wouldn’t be able to see you in my shirt_ , he thinks. He doesn’t say it out loud—of course not—only grunts affirmatively, staring out into the morning. The trees are still dripping with water, sunlight refracting through the droplets and turning them to jewels. The ground is littered with branches and leaves that didn’t survive the onslaught of the storm.

Feeling Clarke’s eyes on him, he turns to look at her just as she looks away, a faint blush on her cheeks. Had she been checking him out?

He pushes the thought away relentlessly, just as she says with forced casualness, “So, you’ve imagined me undressing, huh?”

His cheeks suddenly feel like they’re on fire, and he very carefully doesn’t look at her. “I didn’t mean that,” he mumbles. “It was just…a joke.”

“Okay,” she says lightly, and he swears he can hear a smile in her voice.

They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, chewing on the tough beef of their breakfast, before she leans over and presses a kiss to his cheek. He starts in surprise; her lips are warm, soft, wet.

“Maybe,” she murmurs, “next time I’ll let you undress me the way you imagined it.”

His eyes widen, and he can’t help but look at her; there’s a laugh in her eyes, a smile stretching her lips. “Next time?” The words come out half-strangled.

“Yeah.” She stands, walks out of the cave into the clearing where she can feel the full warmth of the sun. Mouth dry, he watches her go, the sway of her barely-clad hips under his shirt, golden hair shifting over her shoulders. She glances over her shoulder at him, her grin nothing short of devilish. “Next time.”


End file.
